Post by Jane on May 9, 2018 6:19:33 GMT -7

There was an interesting article about spiders in the paper today. Scientists have trained a spider called Kim to jump on command. She is a jumping spider just under half an inch long and they wanted to see her technique in order to help build micro robots that can emulate jumping spiders. They presented her with a series of gaps to jump across, carrying her by hand to start with until she got the idea. They had got four spiders but she was the only one prepared to co-operate. They used high speed cameras and micro CT scans to analyse her jumping behaviour. She uses different techniques depending on the type of jump.

Post by Jane on May 10, 2018 6:17:57 GMT -7

Who would have thought those tiny little legs were so complicated. I think it is quite amusing that because these spiders only eat one small cricket a week, food couldn't be used as an incentive in the training process, the spider was just moved across the gap by hand until she "became familiar with the challenge".